Garrett Morgan's Traffic Light

February is Black History month, and we always like to expose the children to famous black inventors, musicians, politicians, etc.  At this point, they do not see many differences between themselves and their peers, and one that they hardly ever notice is skin color.  I love that about preschoolers!

 

On Friday, we learned about an inventor named Garrett Morgan.  He is responsible for the very early traffic light, which was more like a sign that flipped from "STOP" to "GO".  Eventually it evolved into our modern day stoplight.  You can read more about Garrett Morgan here.

 

For Circle, we read:

and looked at pictures in:

 

Our sorting center was popular!  The children sorted red,  yellow and green beads into compartments of a wooden box.  They used a plastic stick to pick up the beads.

 

 They also sorted red, yellow and green letters into the coordinating bowls.  During this activity, they also matched the letters they took out of the basket to the alphabet chart.  Tongs were used for this matching game.

 

We made playdough stoplights at the playdough center!

 

Our art project was to create a stoplight stick.  We used a tongue depressor, red, yellow and green dot labels, and black crayons to color the background.  So simple and easy!  To go along with this, we looked at the pictures of Garrett Morgan's early traffic signal, and talked about what each color of a stoplight means.

 

Other classroom activities of the day included:

• reviewing the letter Rr and completing a hands-on activity to go along
• playing Silent Stop and Go.  Ask your kiddo to teach you how to play!  This was a good game for eye contact and watching, rather than listening.  I hardly spoke, but used hand gestures for "stop" and "go".  For example, I would ask the kids to clap their hands.  When I motioned "stop", they would stop.  When I motioned "go", they would begin clapping again.  They really had to watch me to know what to do!
 
Next week is going to be lots of fun as we gear up for             
                                                      Valentine's Day!